


Flavourtown Shorts

by Kolurize



Category: Hermitcraft RPF
Genre: Flavourtown ahoy, LITERALLY, M/M, a fic from the inception of the ft au, set in s6 a77 arc, the hermits taste like stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:22:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25694212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kolurize/pseuds/Kolurize
Summary: A Mumbo machine blew up and rendered every hermit with a unique taste..... so naturally, Grian has to investigate.Couple of shippy ficlets indulging the legendary flavourtown concept, from months ago.
Relationships: Grian/Docm77, Grian/Xisumavoid
Comments: 16
Kudos: 325





	1. The Gridoc one

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BastardBin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BastardBin/gifts).



> Quick history, flavourtown was birthed as a concept on the tumblr blog of the creator of twol, and it got cursed very quickly. Now it's buried in the dark history of the discord, although it flares up every now and again.
> 
> You might find these ficlets somewhere in the bowels of that blog from months ago, this is technically cross posting for a wider audience.
> 
> This short is Gridoc, however the fic has NOT been mislabelled, the second ficlet is Grisuma, to be posted soon.
> 
> Enjoy!

It wasn’t long since the Incident, as the server dubbed it, that hermits began finding out that something had changed. Suddenly, they were walking around with only one aftertaste in their mouth regardless of what else they ate, and soon it was discovered that it was actually the hermits themselves that tasted _of_ those things. No one was quite sure why, and Grian hasn’t seen Xisuma in days ever since he dived into the code to try and work out how Mumbo’s machine blowing up managed to do that at all.

In the meantime, people were stuck tasting, well, themselves, at all times. It was innocuous to some, not really aiding or hindering them in their day to day lives. Others were suddenly stuck with the strangest flavours: gunpowder, redstone, in one case even pinewood bark and ice, which Grian didn’t even know had a flavour. They found a good pastime in complaining about it and drinking copious amounts of tea to wash away the taste until the problem was fixed.

Now, to the third kind of hermit, which coincidentally enough included the resident gremlin, this situation was the perfect opportunity for some mischief. Zedaph altered his sheep-themed game show to serve the new server tweak. Tango and Impulse set on making a flavour fountain not unlike their old chicken fountain but modified. Concorp decided to sell bottled hermit flavours, as far as most could be bottled. Grian, the now chocolate-flavoured prankster, made it his goal to have tasted and ranked every hermit on the server.

So began his adventure. He snuck around, flew about, ninja sprang on people and air bombed himself on unsuspecting hermits just to get to lick them and see what they taste like. He even carried a notebook with him to note down every victim and their corresponding flavour. In short, he was a terror, but most people resigned to letting Grian cop a lick since his curiosity was just as easily satisfied. In fact, some were pretty happy to be noted down in the book as "manliest BBQ" or "sweetest cherry".

All but one, apparently.

Doc was avoiding Grian like the plague.

And that wouldn’t do.

“Come now, Doc, you can’t run forever,” Grian taunted, walking around a hangar in Area 77 that Doc was just seen ducking into the moment Grian approached. All was quiet, and were it not for sheer gut feeling, Grian would have gone to look elsewhere by now. “I need to rank everyone and you’re the only one left!”

“Keep your tongue away from me, Grian, or I swear to Hermity--” Doc came out the shadows across the hangar, trident aloft and human eye narrowed. He even had Hans and Franz on a leash. “Plus, you’re trespassing on government property.”

Grian rolled his eyes.

“Oh come off it, everyone knows what you taste like, except I’ve never tasted gunpowder and that something or other cologne-”

“-Old Spice-”

“-yeah, that, and I need to rank it! So, I need a lick.” He bobbed on the balls of his feet as he explained, his appeasing grin shining bright on his face.

“No.”

“Brilliant! So come over- wait. No?”

“Yea, no.”

“Do you mean no, yes or-"

"No, I mean no! Nein. Denied. Now get out of area 77, you trespassing hippie," Doc grumbled, aiming his trident at Grian's feet and shooting. Grian jumped to avoid the weapon, stumbling back, and flew out of the hangar in a flurry of fireworks. He vowed to get his taste of Doc, however, before Xisuma manages to fix everyone.

Long story short, Doc was difficult to corner. The slippery hermit was ever vigilant and no amount of dive bombing or ninja hurtling could score Grian the lick. He had to do something drastic.

Now, in Grian terms drastic could mean, well, many things. Unfortunately for him this time drastic meant doing something he wouldn't have done otherwise, and that was taking the long route. He stalked- ahem, scoped out Doc's haunts, his schedule and projects, and basically became his own observation drone programmed to Doc TV 24/7.

And somehow, that paid off. It took hours upon hours but Doc finally, finally, believed Grian was done with his scheme. He was underestimating the prankster's tenacity as usual. No one else would have stuck around playing the long game, after all, so why would Grian? So, Doc let down his guard and went to bed.

Which is of course when Grian swooped in, landing squarely on top of the lying hermit.

"Wha- heck-" Doc screamed, trying to squirm out of the sheets, pinned as they were by Grian's bodyweight. "Grian, get off me-" but it was too late. Forsaking the triumphant speech lest Doc bucked him off before he was done, Grian leaned down and licked a solid stripe up Doc's right cheek.

And paused.

Doc stilled, his eyes roaming anywhere off to the side.

Silence reigned.

"...vanilla ice cream?"

Doc reddened, then in a sudden move uprooted the smaller hermit from his perch and swiftly reached for his trident.

"Wait, hey now, I didn't mean--" Grian tried, but Doc was having none of it. Within seconds he was flying for his life, chased closely by a veritable tornado of tridents.

If he rated vanilla ice cream his number one flavour after all that, no one had to know.


	2. The Grisuma one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Xisuma has been running himself ragged trying to fix the problem. Grian arrives with some TLC

Grian’s crusade was going as well as it could be expected. So far he’d only had to dropkick two other hermits to get a lick on them and his tiny list of flavours was slowly filling up. He’d had to rinse his mouth only once so far (as he got a commiserating look from Python, no less), so he felt his adventure has been yielding some good results overall.

One thing he was concerned about, however, was the time limit. It’s been nearly five days since the Incident and he hasn’t seen Xisuma since he dived into the bowels of the code to fix the problem. Grian had to check out the progress and maybe cop a taste while he was at it. Uh, that is to say, he was a very concerned friend and Xisuma’s absence was…. concerning. Yes.

Good thing Xisuma’s geometric marvel of a base was a quick flight away from Grian’s tower. He wasn’t looking forward to stalking all the hermits bunked in New Hermitville, if only because it was so _far away_ , so he’d put all local hermits first on the list on purpose. Plus, the majority was based in Hermitville anyway, at least so far. Mumbo had been spending a lot of time in his personal industrial district building things, and Doc was building farms out in Area 77, but overall the neighbourhood was all here.

There was an eerie silence greeting Grian when he landed in the base. Some bats were hanging in the dark corners but they didn’t even stir at the new arrival, sleeping as they were. The towering geometric patterns hung overhead like gatekeepers. Grian hurried towards Xisuma’s work area, where all the technological marvel of the world was at their admin’s fingertips.

There, steeped in empty tea mugs and some junk food wrappers, sat Xisuma. Hair akimbo, eyes bloodshot, he looked every bit the tired man Grian imagined he’d be after this fiasco. He paused at the entrance, just gazing over the mess momentarily. 

“This doesn’t make any sense!” Xisuma exclaimed suddenly, pushing off the desk in frustration. Right. This won’t do.

“You’ve been at it for days, Eks-Eye,” Grian said, walking further into the work space. Xisuma startled, jerked his head towards the source of the sound, lost his balance and fell off his chair. When he realized it was just the neighbour, he let out a deep sigh and slumped on the floor anyway.

“Let me die here,” Xisuma deadpanned. His voice was drained of his usual bounce of good humour, predictably. Grian wasn’t the first hermit to come check up on Xisuma since the Incident, and he probably wasn’t going to be the last, but every single time X managed to work himself to the bone. The entire server knew of his propensity for workaholism and he had a hermit come about every other day to check up on him. Despite that, he took every available hour between those visits trying to sort out everything, and as a result every single supervising hermit hence had to finagle their leader into getting some rest. This time, apparently, it was Grian’s turn.

“Can’t do that,” Grian chirped cheerily. He crouched next to the sad flop mopping the floor and poked him insistently. “Let’s get you some food and sleep,” he paused and sniffed, “and maybe a shower.”

“Noooooo,” Xisuma whined, flopping to one side miserably.

“Can’t believe I’m the one saying this, but you need some rest. Flavourtown can wait. Plus, I can’t add you to my list of flavours if I can’t taste you because you smell, X,” Grian cajoled.

“I taste like failure,” Xisuma dramatised but he did quirk a small smile.

“And I taste like chocolate,” Grian grinned, holding out a prompting hand to help Xisuma up. The admin huffed out a laugh and took the offer. He was finally off the floor, however precariously he swayed as he got up.

“Let’s get you some self care,” Grian announced with a pat on the back that also served to surreptitiously steady the tired hermit. Xisuma sweeped a longing look back towards his work console, but the other hermit wasn’t having it and Xisuma was gently nudged along towards the living areas of the base.

There was a soft lull of nonsense chatter as Grian guided along the half-asleep admin through preparations for bed. Xisuma would have contributed more if he’d gotten any sleep in the past thirty hours, but he could barely hold his head up as it were. 

Soon enough he was getting ushered under soft covers, a steaming mug of tea set on a nightstand next to him just in case. Grian settled himself next to him seriously.

“I’ll cut you a deal, Eks-Eye,” he announced. “I’ll make a list of the flavour of every single hermit on the server, and you will take it easy with fixing the problem until I do.”

Xisuma stared at him silently for a minute, to the point where Grian got worried he’d fallen asleep with his eyes open. Then, he pulled the most mischievous smirk Grian had ever seen on a sleep deprived person’s face.

“Not if I can fix the server before you can get your list,” he sing-songed. Grian gasped dramatically.

“Is that a challenge, Eks-Eye-Zoomavoid?”

“I dunno, is it? Can’t be a challenge if I’m gonna win. In fact, consider this your headstart.”

Grian pulled an offended noise out of the back of his throat.

“Challenge accepted. Shake on it?”

“Shake on it,” Xisuma acquiesced and held out a hand. Grian, ever the sly one, not only shook the hand but leaned down to place a kiss on it, rendering the admin red and speechless.

“What, G-, wh-huh?”

Grian smacked his lips with a smirk. “Water mint,” he determined, “suits you.”

Xisuma’s brain finally caught up to the moment and he sputtered, not sure whether to laugh or be angry. And with a wink and quick “Cheerio,” Grian flew out to continue his crusade under the new rules of engagement, laughing all the way.


End file.
